Week 6 & 7

Our class watched Brain PopJr's video clip biography on Christopher Columbus. This video clip helped students understand exploration and gave a developmentally appropriate look at the journey that lead Columbus to the Bahamas. I really enjoyed hearing all of the exciting journey's the students of room 177 hope to embark upon. Many students can't wait to explore Disney while others want to visit other planets. One student hopes to explore the inside of a volcano someday. 

The class did a wonderful job completing our first personal narrative about the Parlee Farm field trip.  We discussed the features of a good personal narrative:

•  A beginning that tells who, where, and when.
•  A middle that includes events in sequence.
•  An ending that concludes the story.

I am expecting our next narrative will be even better. You can prepare your child for writing by talking and telling stories about the past events or memorable moments. Sometimes the best stories are the stories of failure and eventual triumph. 
(Learning to ride a bike) 

Important Read Alouds: Christopher Columbus, My First Biography , The Leaves Come Falling One by One, by Steve Metzger, Who Took the Farmer's Hat by Joan Nodset, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves, by Lucille Colandro, and Stellaluna by Janell Cannon.

In addition to comparing the similarities and differences between books we are learning to orally retell a story in sequence. Learning to recall and retell are important standards for kindergarten. We are learning transition words and ordinal numbers to scaffold this task. The stories: The Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves and The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything proved to be great teaching tools. Ask your child to retell both of these stories. Visit the link below to see a YouTube song that is sure to help your child and put a silly smile on his/her face.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiUflxXF-Zg

Phonemic Awareness: Our new skill is learning to segment and blend syllables. 

We will continue to practice segmenting and blending beginning sounds with rhyme. The animal alliteration book is coming along. We hope to start circulation soon. 

Examples of on set and rhyme: say    c - at ... cat   b - ird...bird  z - ebra

Fundations: Letter formation and sound association for t,b,f,m,n,i,u,o,c, ...a,g. 

Poems: GREEN and BLACK color poems, When Is It Night, Five Little Pumpkins

Songs: Exercise and Count to 100 & Count Forward, Count Back By 10's
Most of the songs we use in class are written by Jack Hartman

Math: Counting and Writing numbers to 10. 

Science: Our topic is Animal Exploration, we will begin to explore environments and various animals. Starting with mammals and birds. Stellaluna By Jannell Cannon is the first of many stories we will use to compare the characteristics of birds and bats. 

Reminders:

OCTOBER 28th , ZOO FIELD TRIP
OCTOBER 30th , HALLOWEEN CELEBRATION
NOVEMBER 10th, PARENT CONFERENCES, (A Schedule will be coming soon)
NOVEMBER 11th, NO SCHOOL, Veteran's DAY

We are missing our TEN BLACK DOTS BIG BOOK.  
Cameron, Scarlette, JR, Sarah and Umar are the only kids that have taken it home so far. Please be on the look out.